The Prophets of Eternal Fjord (46 page)

In the night a crisis occurs. The boy is tormented by spasms, between which he lies limply and without response to their voices which repeat his name. Sofie cries. He is dying! she sobs, and peers out from between her fingers.

Be quiet! Bertel snaps angrily. You're only making it worse.

The next morning Falck appears. His wig sits askew upon his head and his cassock is dirty. Bertel sees that the priest's hands are shaking. After a perfunctory examination he leaves without a word, only to return an hour later, calm now and smiling, clad in his daily garments.

I must perform an operation upon the infected lung, he tells Bertel. A cleansing, a removal of the purulent matter, the poison that is spreading to the body and giving him the fever. If I am successful, he will recover.

Do what you can, says Bertel.

Question: What are the peculiar properties of water?

Answer:

1. Its fluid nature.

2. Its perceptible density.

3. Its transparency, such that other bodies may be visible in clean and still water.

4. The unity of its particles in drops and beads.

5. The hardness of its particles. If one casts a stone at an angle against its surface, the stone will be cast back in the same manner as in the case of solid bodies.

Falck produces a new pipe from his bag. It is made of copper and as thick as a finger. Like the one he used to let the boy's blood, it is cut diagonally at its tip, ending in a sharp point.

The smith has made this instrument according to my instruction, he says.

They roll the boy onto his side and pull him to the edge of the cot. He seems to be unaware of what is happening. Yet Falck speaks kindly to him; he strokes his hair and tells him, in almost a jovial tone, that he will now do something to make him well. Then he proceeds to tap his fingers against his back, investigating, inch by inch, the resonance of the lungs.

Here, he says, indicating an area, is where the evil lies.

He picks up his copper instrument and a small hammer and turns the point to the place in question. He instructs Bertel to hold the boy firmly, a superfluous instruction insofar as he is unconscious, then taps the point in with the hammer. The boy whimpers. Bertel thinks the sound is like the call of a seal.

Falck kneels down and puts the copper pipe to his lips. He begins to suck, then abruptly removes his mouth from the instrument. A murky fluid drips into the pot. It smells sweet and sickly.

Look, he says, almost enthusiastically. There we have the mischief!

The pus runs slow and thick. Falck must speed it up by sucking on the pipe. He spits and rinses his mouth with water. The pot fills. Sofie empties and returns it. All three stand in silence, staring at the matter as it flows. And then it ceases. Falck withdraws the pipe a little, then inserts it again at another angle. The boy emits a hollow whimper, but remains still. The fluid begins to trickle again; this time there is more blood in it. Falck repositions the instrument a number of times, sucking and spitting, before finally he withdraws it completely. He instructs Sofie to dress the wound. Then they turn the boy over onto his other side.

He must lie with the sick side down, Falck instructs them. In that way we allow it to settle and the good lung to work most fully.

Should I give him salt? Bertel asks.

I fear we are beyond salt, Falck replies. My advice is to pray for him. He gathers his things. Send for me if anything happens. I shall be at home.

The boy does not wake that evening. Bertel sits up all night with Sofie. They listen to his breathing, which at first is lighter and more eased, then later a succession of protracted gasps. Sofie cannot stand it and goes outside. He hears her sobbing on the step and feels angry. He wishes she would not come back, that she would simply go away and disappear.

He must have slept a little, his chin resting on his chest. When he looks up he sees the boy's clear, inquisitive gaze. Sun slants into the room. The boy is very pale. He must have lost a lot of blood during the priest's operation.

Are you awake?

The boy swallows. He says nothing.

Do you want something? Some water?

The boy looks at him in bemusement.

He fetches a cup of water and lifts the boy's head. His lips part slightly, but the water runs out onto the pillow.

Shall I read something for you? Bertel asks. He picks a book at random and opens it.

No, thank you. Clearly articulated.

Bertel takes his hand, but the boy draws it back. He stares without abatement at his father, the same inquisitive gaze.

Madame Kragstedt sends her love, he says desperately.

The boy does not react.

Your good friend, Haldora.

The corners of his mouth quiver slightly. Perhaps it is a smile. Then his eyes close. He sleeps.

The priest does not present himself. Bertel asks Sofie to look for him, but she cannot find him anywhere. Presently, his sister comes. She relieves him at the bedside while he goes to the wreck to find the priest in his berth, stupefied by drink. He goes home again. The boy passes away quietly, shortly after eight in the evening.

With a sense of alleviation he sits down at the table, opens the writing set from Madame Kragstedt and writes:
Jens passed away peacefully in sleep some short time after the Trader's bell rang eight p. m. He was my best friend on earth. Now all fear is past.

He remains seated and skims through the boy's book. Outside, the fire-watcher sings:
At the hour of midnight was our Saviour born.
Between the pages lie small scraps of paper on which he has written with a pen from his set. They must be passages from the book, Bertel thinks to him self. He reads them, one by one. Darkness falls. The fire-watcher sings:
The clock has struck three!
It becomes light:
Black night departs and day begins to dawn
. The hours pass. He reads the boy's notes. He hears the smith:
Jesu, Thou Morning Star!
He hears the colony bell strike the hour. He hears the priest's cow as it lows. He hears the people talk, and life go on. Next to him lies the boy, with marbled skin, as stiff as wood. He wonders if it is true that he is now in a better place. It does not feel like it. It feels as if he is simply gone forever, and that he will never see him again.

The boy is buried beside his cousin. Bertel performs the ceremony him self. He buys wood from the Trade and joins the coffin. He puts the boy inside it, folds his hands, combs his hair. He reads at the grave and casts the soil. He stands alone, mumbling over his Bible in the sunshine. The women – Madame Kragstedt, Sofie and his sister – form the three other corners of a rectangle around the grave. They stare in silence down into the hole, and he considers that like himself they are consumed and mortified that life at any time may be consigned to a hole in the ground, and are filled with guilt that the boy should lie there instead of any one of them.

When he lies beneath the covers that night with his back to Sofie, she tells him that tomorrow she will be leaving. If you've anything to say, say it now.

The next day he goes down to the blubber house and strikes the priest's cow hard on the temple with the smith's hammer. Its legs buckle beneath it. It tosses back its head and jerks its limbs. He places his boot upon its muzzle, then strikes again. The cow is still.

He pretends not to notice Sofie as he returns to the house. She is packing her things, placing them in large bundles by the step. At the shore some natives are making ready a kone boat. He lifts his kayak from the frame and puts it down in the grass. He goes inside and puts on his kayak coat. He glances around the room. There is not a single item he wishes to take with him.

Sofie looks at him enquiringly when he comes back outside. He walks straight past her, lifts up the kayak and carries it down to the shore.

His sister comes running. Where are you going?

I don't know.

Are you coming back?

He looks at her. I don't think so. Perhaps.

We have lost the most precious thing of all, she says. But we still have each other.

Give your priest my greeting, he says.

Then he climbs into the kayak and paddles out towards the open sea.

Question: What is the human soul?

Answer: The spirit that is united with the human body, such that the body is enlivened and by the soul's influence may conceive of such things that are outside the body and think upon them.

The Ninth Commandment

The Taasinge Slot (1792–3)

The Ninth Commandment, as it is most plainly to be taught by a father to his family:

‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house.'

What does this imply?

Answer: That we should fear and love God, so that we may not by any strat­agem attempt to obtain our neighbour's inheritance or home, nor acquire the same under the pretext of justice; but to be sub servient in preserving the same in his possession.

Morten Falck has discovered that a person may simply let go. Life makes no claim upon a man, but trickles away through the orifices of the body and is gone. It is easy.

In the captain's cabin of the
Taasinge Slot
, where the horizon inclines in the portholes like the seasickness and where half the planks have been broken up, he sits and allows his beard to grow. He writes letters to Kragstedt, to Haldora, to his sister in Nakskov, to the Missionskollegium in Copenhagen, to his parents at home in Lier.
Do not believe what you hear, my dear Kirstine, and forget me not! With peace in my mind I go to rest. I have been happy and am now reconciled. Your loyal and devoted brother, Morten Falck, former Priest of the Mission, the Colony of Sukkertoppen.

The widow takes care of their dispatch, or at least assures him of it. She comes to him daily. She sits on the cot and is bored. She considers him with curiosity. He offers her aquavit from the keg, but she declines. What do you want from me exactly? he asks.

I like to look at you, she says. You look strange, Priest.

You enjoy watching me die. That is what.

She gives a shrug.

So much has happened. Bertel's boy is dead, Sofie gone away, Bertel himself vanished. What has become of Bertel? he asks. Your brother.

No one has seen him since last autumn, she says. Most likely he is dead, the lucky fellow, and sitting with his boy at this moment at the table with Abraham and the others.

He grasps what she tells him and understands that he ought to be saddened, perhaps to cry, at least to say something priestly concerning the colony's state of total disintegration. But he feels nothing and remains silent about it.

And Roselil? he says after a while. Is Roselil dead too?

Your cow is dead, she says. I've told you many times. It was almost a year ago. Someone hit her on the head with a hammer.

Good, he says. I am glad to hear it. Roselil has gone home. We are all going home.

The Trader had it cut up and salted the meat for the winter.

Then she lives on, he says. Does she not, in a way? He looks up at her as though for confirmation, but she shakes her head.

One day she comes with letters. A ship has arrived. One is from his father to tell him his mother has passed away.

He puts the letter down. It falls on the floor. My mother is dead, he says.

She's lucky, says the widow. Dying is not easy.

Yes, it is, he says. Just look at me.

You're not dead. You just smell bad.

Did you take my letters to the Trader and his wife?

I threw them away. You can write letters when you're well.

But I will not be well. I don't want to be well!

It's not for us to decide.

She brings him food, food from the natives with whom she lives, boiled meat, soup, fish. Unfortunately his appetite is ravenous and he cannot abstain from eating. The keg of aquavit is emptying, though as yet it remains half full. Sometimes he lifts it up and dances a few steps with it in the inclining cabin, singing a shanty he learned on his voyage with
Der Frühling
, or one of Brorson's hymns. The air turns chilly; snow intrudes through the timber, ice forms in the cracks of the bulkhead. The widow comes with back issues of the
Christiania-Kureren
and
Kjøbenhavns Posttidende
and together they stuff them into the gaps. She teaches him to keep a train-oil lamp burning by trimming the wick. If he allows it to go out, she pulls his beard and scolds him. When he needs to empty his bowels he climbs down into the hold and squats at the bow. He discharges his filth upon the planks and it seeps away through the cracks. He refrains from ever going ashore. He has made a rule for himself that he will never set foot on land again. He wishes to sail into the sunset as captain of the wrecked
Taasinge Slot
. Until now he has abided by it. He spends most of his time lying in the slanting cot, reading small scraps torn from the
Posttidende. Denmark has no other natural wealth than .  .  . possible perfec­tion! Hippocrates .  .  . the oldest Danish legislators .  .  . the country's happiness in sight .  .  . population of Danish peasantry .  .  . our number lottery .  .  . by the new year of 1777 .  .  . number lottery in Denmark .  .  . such considerable loss for whoever should gamble .  .  . state of theology in this country .  .  .

He puts on his cassock, which is furry white with mildew, pulls his festering wig down over his forehead and searches for his ruff. But the ruff is gone. He delivers a sermon without it, a sermon of fire and brim­stone in the manner of the old pastor at Nakskov before his trembling congregation. His own congregation is humbler and consists of the lice which predominantly inhabit the area of his cuffs, his armpits and the inside and out of his wig, but which nonetheless are many!

The widow comes. What are you doing? She helps him back into the cot.

He passes out, sleeps dreamlessly and arises twelve hours later with a bandage around his head.

You fell, she says.

His body quivers. He eats hard tack soaked in warm aquavit and begins to feel better. He considers his situation. This is not as easy as he thought. Has the ship arrived? he asks.

The ship sailed a long time ago, says the widow. It's winter.

How are things in the colony?

There's a new carpenter and a new cook, she says. And the Trader has written off for a new priest.

Good, he says. Excellent. I have written to Dr Fabricius myself regarding a successor to my position.

He contracts dysentery. The weather is so cold his excrement freezes to his buttocks and thighs, thawing and beginning to exude its stench only when he returns to the cabin. He lies in his cot and hasn't the strength to go into the hold to evacuate his bowels. When eventually he gets to his feet it is too late and he falls back, exhausted, onto the bed.

This is the bottom, he thinks to himself. And about time!

But the bottom is never the bottom. There is always another bottom below it. He descends through nine circles of debasement to debasement that is deeper still. He finds it to be a most satisfying and instructive expe­rience. The widow is with him and observes him from a distance. Then she is there no more. Perhaps he simply imagines her to be there. He lifts up his head and she gives him a little to drink. Aquavit, he groans, give me my aquavit!

There is no more aquavit, she says. You've drunk the whole keg. Now the trouble begins.

Cold, he breathes through chattering teeth. I'm so cold.

I'm washing you, says the widow. You will soon be warm again.

He feels himself turned first one way then another, the wet cloth at his lower regions, the widow's mutterings of annoyance. I am dead, he thinks. She is preparing me for my grave and wrapping me in my shroud. But Purgatory is cold, not at all hot as we learned.

His skin retracts from his bones, which rest hard against the planks of the cot. He can find no respite. He tosses and turns, or else his spirit does, struggling to free itself, while his empty frame remains stiff upon the bunk. He perches attentively on a joist in the ceiling, from where he observes himself lying huddled in his bed, looking up at himself perched on a joist in the ceiling, observing himself lying huddled in his bed. He emits a scarcely human, inorganic stench like waste from a tannery, a pungent chemistry of foulness. He notes how his clothes stick to his skin, the ammonia of his urine burning his thighs. He sees the seeping bedsores, registers the bile that trickles from the corners of his mouth. He senses the way he squirms to be released from his carcass, through such orifices as are amenable. Am I a part of the world or is the world a part of me? When I die, will I then become liquid and be stirred into the great soup of the Unknown? He thanks the Lord for his final days of peace and reconciliation. Then, resolutely, he closes his eyes.

Are you ready now? the widow asks, holding an enormous gold crucifix out in front of him.

Ready for what, my dear? he asks or thinks he asks, squinting his eyes at the crucifix as it swings like a pendulum before him, its glare blinding him.

Ready to leave.

Leave for where? He holds a hand up in front of his face.

For Habakuk and Maria Magdalene, says the widow. The time has come.

What sort of a person are you? he says or thinks he says. Can you not let a dead man lie in peace?